If the Cowboys were to blow up their roster, was this the year to do it?

Dallas Morning News | Apr 5

When the Cowboys completed the blockbuster contract extension with quarterback Tony Romo last week, they provided more evidence that they are committed to keeping their most accomplished stars. Before Romo signed his name to a document that is guaranteed to make him $55 million richer, Dallas had restructured the contracts of Miles Austin, Jason Witten, DeMarcus Ware and Jay Ratliff.

These players have celebrated one playoff victory in their careers and experienced plenty of disappointment.

Their individual success has been overshadowed, in many ways, by their team’s failures – all of which have spliced together to form an unsightly composite picture of a franchise stuck in the mud.

In February, team owner Jerry Jones said that in order to break out of the rut something “inordinate” needed to be done.

He was right.

But while Jones explained he took steps toward achieving that goal with the restructuring of the coaching staff, the question is whether he could have gone further by blowing the team up and building anew. This would have appeared the year to launch with such a bold plan – one that would have taken some major foresight and gumption to initiate.

The Cowboys, after all, had a coach, Jason Garrett, whose job security already seemed endangered. They had also just begun the process of installing a brand new defense. And most perhaps the most obvious argument for tearing it all down was that they didn’t have the wherewithal to even make slight alterations because they were completely handcuffed by the manacles of the salary cap.

Dallas had no way of substantially upgrading a team that finished 2012 with the same 8-8 record it posted the previous season despite the additions of seven free agents. If the Cowboys couldn’t make progress after infusing the roster with so much veteran talent last year, what made them think they would perform appreciably better by maintaining the status quo with player personnel in 2013?